Video: Restoring normal colors

All right people, it maybe a long way to Tipperary, but it's an even longer way to the end of advanced blending inside of Photoshop and yet here we stand poised to completely finish this chapter and this composition that we've been working on here. We've successfully established the transitional layers, one multiply and one luminosity layer that will help us blend this young lady with her new background. We are now going to top it off with an application of yet another layer set to the normal blend mode, slightly blurred inward as you'll see and it's going to basically we're going to create a composition that makes it look as if she spent her entire life against this background, she is going to look so absolutely credible.

The elusive alpha channel remains one of the most misunderstood yet powerful tools in Photoshop. Alpha channels are collections of luminance data that control the transparency of an image, and they inform just about every aspect of Photoshop. As he builds transitional blended layers, fashions a depth map, makes edge adjustments, and takes on extreme channel mixing, Omni Award-winning expert Deke McClelland teaches Photoshop users that where there's a will, there's a way. Photoshop CS3 Channels and Masks: Advanced Techniques covers mapping texture on an image, turning flesh into stone, using vector masks, working with all different channels, creating a rustic edge effect, and much more. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

Restoring normal colors

All right people, it maybe a long way to Tipperary, but it's an even longer wayto the end of advanced blending inside of Photoshop and yet here we standpoised to completely finish this chapter and this composition that we've beenworking on here. We've successfully established the transitional layers, onemultiply and one luminosity layer that will help us blend this young lady withher new background.We are now going to top it off with an application of yet another layer set tothe normal blend mode, slightly blurred inward as you'll see and it's going tobasically we're going to create a composition that makes it look as if shespent her entire life against this background, she is going to look soabsolutely credible.

So I am working on as usual the updated version of this image, it's calledTransitionals.psd found inside the 10 Advanced Blend folder. I want you to makesure that the top layer Lum is selected and then go ahead and press Ctrl+Alt+Jor Command+Option+J on the Mac in order to jump it to yet another layer. We'llcall this one Norm for normal. She is not actually changing her name to a man'sname and then we'll switch the mode from Luminosity way here at the bottom ofthe pop up menu to normal way here at the top.

So go ahead and choose the Normal mode. That's all we have to do inside thisdialog box. So click OK in order to accept that change. Miraculously heroriginal colors are reinstated. Bad news is that we have some edges that need alittle bit of work right here. So let's go ahead and work on them. I want youto click on the layer mask for the Norm layer. So just go ahead and click onlayer mask thumbnail for this top layer in the stack. We don't need to chokethis layer anymore, I just want to go ahead and blur it.So I am going to reapply the last filter we applied. Assuming that you've beenworking along with me, that last filter is right there, Gaussian blur, so allyou have to do if that's the case is press Ctrl+Alt+F or Command+Option+F onthe Mac in order to revisit the Gaussian blur dialog box. I am going to changethe radius value to 40 pixels like so and I will go ahead and drag that previewover so we can see the before version, then I will release. This is the afterversion. Very fuzzy indeed, so I basically doubled the radius value this time around.

I will go ahead and click OK. Now we have that same problem we had before lasttime we applied Gaussian blur just in the last exercise. Well, not only do weblur inward which is a good thing but we blurred outward as well. By virtue ofthe fact that we blurred outward, we've created this halo around the girl'sshoulders and around her hair and so forth.In order to get rid of that halo, we could revisit that multiply layer maskonce again. But this time we don't have to, we just applied one filter and onefilter only, just Gaussian blur so we can fade it with the original appearanceof this layer mask by going up to the Edit menu and choosing Fade Gaussian Bluror you can press Ctrl+Shift+F, Command+ Shift+F on the Mac. Just go ahead andchoose the Command though and now you can establish a blend mode.

We want to adjust the areas of white inside of the image. So in other words, wewant the Gaussian blur inward but not outward. That means Gaussian blurringinto the white area, but not into the black area. So we're going to take theblurred version of the image and use it to darken the original version of theimage and we're going to do that using the Multiply mode. So go ahead andchoose Multiply and watch this area is going to go away, there it is.We totally get rid of that halo there because we just used the original versionof the mask in order to multiply away the bright edges of the new version ofthe mask. All right, now that we've done it, go ahead and click OK in order toaccept that modification and we are done, that's all it takes. And if you wereto take a look at these various layers as we will right now, you can see thatevery single one of the layers is making an important contribution to theoverall whole. So this is what things look like without that Multiply layer.

You can see that we're totally now missing those dark edges that we need toburn in to the background. We desperately need those edges in order for thiscomposition to work. So go ahead and turn Multiply back on. If we didn't havethe Normal layer obviously, if I were to turn Norm off, we wouldn't have any ofthe proper colors inside of the interior of this image. So we wouldn't have theright flash tones, her dress would look wrong, her lips would look wrong, hereyes would look wrong, her hair would look wrong and so on of course. So I willgo ahead and turn normal back on, but even the Lum layer, the Luminosity layeris making a very important contribution. If you turn it off, you'll see whatthe big difference is.

You'll see how our transitions don't look right at all. We're too dark, we'retoo translucent here around the edges of the shoulder and the hair and so on.With the help of that Luminosity layer though, we have a nice step in betweenNormal and Multiply. So the entire composition works. All right, I am going togo ahead and zoom out, and you can see it just looks great, feels awesomeinside of this new environment.Now, let's say we want to move her into a different position. We need to beable to move all those three layers at the same time. So go ahead and click onone, Normal is selected for me right now. Then, Shift+Click on the last of thethree. So I'd click on Norm and then Shift+Click on Multiply in order to selectthis entire range. Then, I am going to go up to the Layers palette menu and Iam going to choose New Group from Layers in order to group all of these layerstogether. Photoshop will invite me to name this group and I will just go aheadand call it young lady because that's what she is and I will click OK in orderto accept that result.

So now we have all three of the layers grouped together, so that they will movetogether, we can transform them together and so on. Now, I am going to tab awaymy palettes and if I were to Ctrl+Drag the image, I would move all three layersat once. So I will go ahead and cheat her over to the left hand side a littlebit and that is the final version of my image. I am going to go ahead and fillthe screen with the image, and I am going to go ahead and zoom in and voila,there it is. What an awesome composition. Check out those hairs, those details around the edges.

Not only do we have every single hair intact, but we have these wonderfulbursts as well. So, all that softness that we had inside of the original imagehas been conveyed into this new background as well. So we're wrapping thewarmth around the right side of her head and we are -- just on and on. I meanwe can see through -- even we can see through these edges of her shoulder aswell which is in keeping with the original version of the photograph. So abeautiful, credible composition, thanks to a little bit of masking and a wholelot of advanced blending inside of Photoshop CS3.

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